Fay loved Coney Island.
The Mermaid and Surf are two streets in Coney Island.
"Looking at the modest buildings on Mermaid Avenue, the signs
chatter English, Spanish, sort of Chinese,
as the bright sun's cracked rays splash walls and windows.
You see that Mermaid is where locals
go to pray at a shrine, offering solace and recovery,
buy mangoes and apples and chicken,
or get their hair done by African women
all the way from Timbuktu.
Surf Avenue is the boundary between neighborhood and fun
seekers' noise and trophies and candy, beaches, bikinis,
and beer.
There, we spy the Secret Psychic's shack.
She is not there to offer solace in the name of a soul mate
desired, but she does not need to tell us about death,
which is everywhere.
Hear it in the shouts of riders from the top of looping rides,
in the Atlantic's dark waves.
And the cut flesh of burned hands of fry cooks come
for 'The American Dream,' but lately riding the night's angry
mares."